Re: What to "cover"

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

Rick Tarara responded to Tim O'Donnell's comments with:

> Tim,
>
> Your stated dillema above is common.  You are mired between at least TWO
> reform movements.  One is a content driven reform--coming primarily from
> University teachers--that seeks to de-emphasize the traditiional curriculum
> in favor of much more NEW (and at least to them) EXCITING physics.  In other
> words, START with Modern Physics!  The other movement is the pedagogically
> focused movement by groups engaged in Physics Educational Research (PER)
> which wants to also reduce the amount of material, but which is in general
> agreement (I think) that the place to start is mechanics/dynamics.  If
> anything, this movement would have you spend even more time in this
> curricular area.
>
> The general reasonings as I understand them are:
>
> Modern First:  This is where the current action is.  This is where today's
> physicists are working.  It is from this area that the future of physics
> will be developed.  Excite and interest the student early in their physics
> experience rather than bore them with 300 year old physics.
>
> Mechanics/dynamics first (and intense):  The process of learning is one
> where we bootstrap our way to understanding by building off what we already
> know to construct new understanding, new knowledge.   Mechanics/dynamics is
> the one area of physics about which everyone has experiences and (pre/mis)
> conceptions.  It is therefore a GOOD (if not the BEST) place to begin the
> learning process of using these experiences and conceptions to construct a
> more rational, more structured, more accurate understanding of the world.
> The various skills (such as problem solving) which are needed to do so, are
> more easily learned when applied to familiar and meaningful situations.
>
> As I see it, the Modern First movement suffers from a lack of skills and
> experiences from which to build any real understanding.  On the other hand,
> there is definitely much merit in making young people aware of what Physics
> is actually involved with at this point in time.
>
> The PER movement has a lot going for it, but has yet to demonstrate that it
> produces 'better' physicists.  It is also not clear whether non-science
> major 'clientele really benefit more from a narrow but deep conceptual
> course, an encyclopedic survey, a philosophy of science approach, or a more
> societal impact approach in introductory physics courses.  For example,
> future pre-college teachers might well benefit most from the PER type course
> while others might benefit more from a science and society course.
>
> We can't do it all in a single course, but unfortunately the fact remains
> that far too many students will see ONLY a single physics course (or worse,
> none at all).  No answers here either  ;-(

As I see it, as long as we limit ourselves to trying to do everything
in one year, in competition with all those other demands on our
students' time, we are doomed to find no answers. The only way to
break out of this cycle is to start to teach physics as physics much
earlier on in the students' educational career. Something like the
European model, of giving two or three days of physics (perhaps
alternated with two or three days of chemistry or biology) to the
students as early as the fifth grade will help immeasurably. It would
also be great if math classes (algebra and geometry) would deal with
some of the topics that we have to deal with that are essentially
applied mathematics (such as the d-v-a-t kinematics and decomposition
of vectors) The trouble with limiting these topics to physics classes
is that, for the beginning student, whose algebra skills are still
new and pretty shaky, they take a good long time to cover properly,
and we don't have that time if we want to be able to cover physics,
so we give them a superficial run and move on to the more interesting
stuff and many of the students are lost and never catch up. They tell
their friends how "hard" physics is and they decide to skip it, and
so forth.

But back to the European model. The biggest obstacle to making this
scheme work is the lack of agreement on the part of physics teachers
about what should be taught and when, exemplified by Rick's
exposition of the two leading schools of what to do in one year. If
we could come to some consensus of what to teach and when (hopefully
repeating some of the more difficult topics at different levels in
different years), so that teachers everywhere would have a reasonable
expectation of what to expect their students to know, then the
teaching of physics (and presumably chemistry and biology, as well)
could become much more efficient. And what would be wrong for
colleges (or at least the largest and most prestigious--those with
the most clout among students) to require physics (and other sciences
as well, but I am concerned about physics here) of all their
entrants. One physics becomes an entrenched part of the curriculum
for all students, it will be possible for teachers at each level to
know what to expect of their students and (this may be more important
than knowing what to expect) know what will be expected of their
students at the next level, as well as what now stuff will be
introduced then. This way, every teacher won't feel constrained to
start at the beginning and to "cover" everything.

But before we can even think about implementing such a program, we,
the physics teachers, have to come to some consensus about what to
teach when--something we have never been able to do. During the
recent bloodletting about national standards, I noted with dismay the
frequency that everyone said--we are not trying to create a national
curriculum. But a national curriculum is just what we do need.
Otherwise we are condemning ourselves to the problems that have been
eloquently presented in this thread, always concluded with the
poignant "No answers here, either."

Well, there is an answer. So how do we implement it? I don't have a
detailed plan, but it seems to me that our umbrella organizations
(AAPT, APS, AIP, all of which have educations objectives) need to get
together and start beating the drum for a national curriculum, and
the Deparment Chairs conference needs to start calling for colleges
to require physics of their entrants. If good students know that they
need a good physics course in order to get into Duke or Stanford or
Yale, or Berkeley or Chapel Hill or Illinois, to name a few, they
would demand that their high schools provide such. In a mobile
society such as ours, a national curriculum is the only way we can be
sure that every student has the same opportunity for a sound basic
education.

Creating such an animal will not be pretty, and what we will get, at
least in the beginning will probably something akin to a least common
denominator, but if we don't start at all because we don't think we
will get a good one right away, we throw away the opportunity. A
curriculum in existence can be improved but if we don't have one at
all, then we are back to where we are now, with all the different
interests pushing their own view, and teachers, who just want to get
on with it, not knowing where to go, when they do go, going off in
all different directions, i.e., chaos.

Having proposed this idea (I'm not the first, even on this list, and
I've tossed this idea out to the list before), I would like to hear
arguments why is should not be done that do *not* include references
to "the sanctity of the local school boards' prerogative to set
curricula." In this day and age, where the population is so mobile,
and information is so readily available, I find that argument
eighteenth century nonsense.

Hugh
--

Hugh Haskell
<mailto://haskell@ncssm.edu>
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

(919) 467-7610

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